Younger-Readers Archives - Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson

Book 250 pages Level: all audiences Reaching for the Moon was written by Katherine Johnson and published in 2019 (by Simon & Schuster: Athenium Books for Young Readers), when she was one over hundred years old. Johnson was one of the NASA “computers” featured in the best-selling book Hidden Figures: The Untold True Story of Four African-American Women who Helped Launch Our Nation Into Space and the popular movie Hidden Figures. The book discusses Johnson’s work at NASA, but its primary focus is on her family, her Christian faith, and how those came together to help her and other African-Americans succeed during a time when they lived under both legal segregation and a constant threat of violence. From the publisher: The inspiring autobiography of NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, who helped launch Apollo 11. As a young girl, Katherine Johnson showed an exceptional aptitude for math. In school she quickly skipped ahead several grades and was soon studying complex equations with … Continue reading →

Maria Mitchell: The Soul of an Astronomer

Book 123 pages Level: all audiences This book about America’s first professional woman astronomer is written for younger readers, but readers of all ages are likely to enjoy it. Written by Beatrice Gormley and published in 1995 by Eerdmans, Soul of an Astronomer descibes Mitchell’s life and scientific work, as would be expected from a biography, but it also gives much attention to her religious ideas. Mitchell was very concerned with religious matters—“Every formula which expresses a law of nature,” she once wrote, “is a hymn of praise to God”. However, she sometimes came into conflict with people over those matters, and the book covers that aspect of her life, too. From the publisher: In the mid-1800s, a turbulent time when women were often thought to be unworthy of higher education, Maria Mitchell rose above the prejudices of the day to become America’s first professional woman astronomer. This exciting biography tells the story of Maria Mitchell’s life, her amazing achievements, … Continue reading →

Strong Force – The Story of Physicist Shirley Ann Jackson

Book 110 pages Level: all audiences This book by Diane O’Connell is a biography of Shirley Ann Jackson, the first African-American woman to obtain a Ph.D. from MIT (her field of study was nuclear physics). She went on to work at places including Fermilab, CERN, Stanford, and Bell Laboratories, and in the 1990’s was made head of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. She later became president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. While the book is primarily about Jackson’s scientific career and the challenges she faced, it does discuss the role that church played in Jackson’s life, and her “strong belief in God”. Strong Force is published by the Joseph Henry Press, an imprint of the National Academies Press, and by Scholastic. It is written at a middle school level. The following is from Scholastic: Shirley Ann Jackson sees the unseen. She’s an expert in the invisible particles that make up everything in the universe, including you. Shirley Ann Jackson is a … Continue reading →

The Girl Who Drew Butterflies

Book 130 pages Level: all audiences This is a book about Maria Sybilla Merian, written for readers at the middle school level and up. The author is Joyce Sidman, and it was published in 2018 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Merian was a scientist who carefully studied caterpillars, butterflies, and moths and the plants on which they fed—and she was an artist who made beautiful drawings of the creatures that she studied. Merian wrote that “one is full of praise at God’s mysterious power and the wonderful attention he pays to such insignificant little creatures”. While the book is primarily about Merian’s studies, the author also discusses Merian’s religion, which played a large role in her life. From the author’s web page: Everyone knows that butterflies come from caterpillars, right? Not in the 17th century, they didn’t. How would they have known? Metamorphosis took place in hidden places. There were no books describing this process, or Monarch kits to send away for. … Continue reading →

Johannes Kepler: Discovering the Laws of Celestial Motion

Book 144 pages Level: all audiences This book about Johannes Kepler is oriented toward younger readers. Written by William Boerst and was published in 2003, the book provides an overview of Kepler’s life and work that includes Kepler’s religious motivation for his work. For example, it notes that Kepler viewed the heliocentric system as a fitting creation of God, and cites Kepler’s statement that the real purpose of comets is as “witnesses that there is a God in heaven, by whom all future fortune by whom all future fortune and misfortune is foreseen, announced, decreed, regulated, measured and governed”. It contains many historical illustrations. The focus of the book is on Kepler’s science, and particularly on his Laws of Planetary motion. To this end it includes both diagrams and some introductory mathematics. Click here for a preview of this book, courtesy of Archive.org.

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Gregor Mendel – Father of Genetics

Book 128 pages Level: all audiences This 1997 book by Roger Klare is part of the Enslow Publishers Great Minds of Science series. It provides an overview of Fr. Gregor Mendel’s life and work that is oriented towards younger readers, and that is based largely on the biography of Mendel by Hugo Iltis. From the publisher: Gregor Mendel is known as the father of genetics. Genetics is the science of explaining how parents pass certain characteristics to their offspring. Mendel was an Austrian monk. He experimented with peas and other plants in the garden of the St. Thomas Monastery in what is now the Czech Republic. Mendel would cross-breed pea plants with different traits—round peas and wrinkled peas, for example. He wanted to see what their offspring were like. His experiments led to some startling discoveries. Though Mendel thought he had discovered something important, he never knew just how important his work really was. When Mendel published the results of … Continue reading →

Elizabeth Blackwell: First Woman Physician

Book 112 pages Level: all audiences This book on Elizabeth Blackwell was written by Tristan Boyer Binns and published by Scholastic in 2005. From the jacket cover: At a time when only men were supposed to become doctors, Elizabeth Blackwell earned a medical degree in 1849 from Geneva Medical College in New York. She was the first woman in the United States to ever earn such a degree. After graduating, she struggled to find ways to expand her medical knowledge. She traveled to France to study at La Maternite hospital in Paris. A serious eye infection forced Blackwell to lose her left eye and ended her dreams of becoming a surgeon. In 1853, she founded a free dispensary in New York City, the first of her many efforts to help provide women and children with better health care. Throughout her career, she fought tirelessly to help other women gain opportunities in medicine. Click here for a preview. This book is … Continue reading →

George Washington Carver – An Innovative Life

Book 32 pages Level: all audiences This 2007 book by Elizabeth MacLeod is for younger readers, and tells about the life and work of agricultural scientists and biochemical engineer George Washington Carver. Henry Ford described Carver as the greatest scientist living at the time. Then-senator Harry S Truman stated that “The scientific discoveries and experiments of Dr. Carver have done more to alleviate the one-crop agricultural system in the South than any other thing that has been done in the history of the United States.” Carver was a Christian who taught his students Bible classes as well as science classes, and who did not pursue profits from his discoveries because believed them to be a free gift from God. Click here to download a preview of this book. From the publisher, Kids Can Press: This title … introduces readers to the scientist, inventor and professor who became a symbol of African American success and interracial harmony. George Washington Carver was … Continue reading →

Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas

Book 32 pages Level: all audiences This colorful book by Cheryl Bardoe was produced in partnership with the Field Museum in Chicago. It tells about the life of Gregor Mendel and about his work. The book provides a fairly detailed discussion of both his life as a monk and of his experiments, even though it is only 32 pages long and is a “picture book” written to be accessible to grade school students. (A Faith and Science entry for a related book on Mendel written for a more advanced audience is also available—click here). Click here to download a brief excerpt. From the publisher, Abrams Books: The only picture book available about the father of genetics and his pea plants! How do mothers and fathers—whether they are apple trees, sheep, or humans—pass down traits to their children? This question fascinated Gregor Mendel throughout his life. Regarded as the world’s first geneticist, Mendel overcame poverty and obscurity to discover one of the fundamental … Continue reading →

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Tag Archives: Younger-Readers